


In the Ghetto (with the McCormick Family)

by Paladin4TheRight



Series: Revenge AU [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: Forgery, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Low income family, Poor Life Choices, Possibly chaptered, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-03-26 18:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13863645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paladin4TheRight/pseuds/Paladin4TheRight
Summary: Food was a rare commodity, to say the absolute least, for the McCormick family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is a lot of mention of underage sex in this one. It's all mostly for Carol and Stuart. If this is received well, I might add more. I have a soft spot for the McCormick kids but you know their lives are crap.

Food was a rare commodity, to say the absolute least, for the McCormick family. The fact of the matter was so obvious, much to the children’s embarrassment, that when schools and business around town held canned food drives, it was always dedicated to the most destitute clan in South Park: the McCormicks. 

The household consisted of five members: a mother, Carol; a father, Stuart; two boys, Kevin at thirteen years old and Kenny at ten; and a girl, Karen, who brought up the rear at seven years old.

Carol was convinced that she was doing the best she could for her children and herself. When she first got pregnant she was a mere thirteen years old. _‘It was entirely an accident.’_ She’d exclaimed to her less than forgiving parents just right before they told her to pack some clothes and move out. In desperation, she went to the man that had gotten her pregnant.

His name was Stuart, a twenty-six year old who, at the time, was being completely supported by his wife. He and his wife, a voluptuous red head, had a young son together, or so Stuart vaguely remembers. It was one night after coming home drunk and horny that Stuart decided to become intimate with the babysitter, a cute little red head, whom he claimed to have mistaken for his wife. After waking up to various breakable items being thrown around the house and one red head yelling at another, Stuart realized his infidelity. He also realized that the babysitter was only thirteen.

Needless to say, Stuart was not married to his wife for very long after the incident. She divorced him based on adultery and was awarded to keep her house in the mountain town. She refused to stay in the home where her husband molested a teenager and moved shortly after selling the house. She took their son with her.

Eight months later and still entirely jobless, Carol and Stuart were betrothed and a month after that, Carol gave birth to their blue eyed bundle of money issues: Kevin Walker McCormick.

Carol was able to get her first job after three months of being with Stuart permanently. She worked as a paper delivery girl for South Park’s local newspaper. With the money she earned from her occupation, she was able to buy diapers for Kevin. She always managed to steal a few jars of baby food every time she went to the store. Consistently she was asked if the baby was her little brother. This left the poor young mother embarrassed and unwilling to take Kevin to the store so she would leave him home. Sometimes Stuart was there to watch him. Sometimes he was not.

Three long and hungry years had gone by before Carol realized she was pregnant with their second bun in the oven. It wasn’t long before she knew she was with child, though, that Stuart had started to cook methamphetamines in the backyard of their decrepit house. Some of it was sold so they could bring in a little more money but the McCormick parents needed an escape from their everyday lives. Thusly, more often than not, the meth they made was used for recreational purposes and soon the drug became an addiction for them both. Before Carol knew what was going on around her, she and Stuart were attending cult meetings for the dark lord Cthulu for the free booze.

The pair were arrested during one of the meetings by police attempting to break up the cult. They paid all their fines by sitting out their time in jail. It was while they were behind iron bars and unable to see each other that Carol realized she’d not had her period in a couple of months. The realization as well as the detox from the chemicals screwed with her mind in a way that was so undeniable that she began to cry, inconsolably, for the next two months. All she could think of was how she and Stuart could never afford another baby. One was more than enough and Kevin, at this point, had already grown so independent. Speaking of Kevin, what happened to him? She was rotting in jail with the other miscreants of South Park. Surely some form of child protective services had discovered him and taken him in. He had to be safe.

Being released from jail, Carol and Stuart never felt freer. They were detoxed, clean, and sober. They were responsible and full of life, love, and joy. Only they weren’t. That was the furthest thing from the truth. Being in jail had only left the couple wanting more of what they could not have and the pressures of being constantly watched were hazardous.

Four clean months later and Kenneth Jack McCormick was brought into the world. Kevin, who’d been found wandering around the McCormick family home after five months of being on his own, couldn’t have been more upset. His parents assumed he was sad because he wasn’t the only child anymore.

Stuart had gotten a job at the local food mart, stocking items and doing inventory at night. That way he could watch Kevin and Kenny during the early morning while Carol was back at delivering the newspaper. This worked out really well until Kenny turned eight months old and Stuart ended up having a really bad week. His boss had yelled at him for something that, clearly, was not his fault and he felt as though he’d been berated all week long. That led Stuart to go to Skeeter’s Bar and fall back into old habits. He just stopped going into work. He never bothered to call in, put in a notice, anything. His excuse, when asked about why he left, was that the government was holding too much from his check so he might as well not work at all. Minimum wage was a joke anyway.

The abuse was just part of being with Stuart. When he was drunk, he was an asshole but, as far as Carol was concerned, he made up for it when he was sober. If Carol wasn’t the seventeen year old mother of two boys, maybe she could manage to pick up and leave, but she relied so much on the older man that she didn’t feel any confidence in leaving him. She was stuck.

Two years later, Stuart figured he’d had enough of this life. He could barely stand what he’d made with his little family. He’d packed up a couple bags with his few belongings and left, telling Carol that he would never come back home. She cried, tried to convince him to stay, and then grew angry. She’d yelled at him to leave and pushed him out of the house. Carol slammed the door in Stuart’s face. Since they didn’t have a lock on the door, she held tightly onto the knob as Stuart began to pound on the door. It took a few minutes but finally Stuart grew tired and kicked the door one last time before storming off.

Loneliness consumed Carol over the upcoming months. She guessed that Kevin was old enough to watch Kenny whenever she began to go out. She dated a guy or two but they just did not fill the void that Stuart had left on her heart. Maybe she was a glutton for punishment because she knew the older man wasn’t good for her. She began to drink with the little bit of money she had been making as a busser at City Wok. She fed the kids a couple frozen waffles a day with the money she made selling her poorly made meth.

One day she was sitting, watching stolen cable on the dilapidated old couch, when the door slammed open. Stuart held tightly onto two bags that, when dropped, sounded somewhat heavy. A sigh escaped Carol’s lips as she, dejectedly, turned back to watch the television.

They had sex that night.

A month went by and Carol discovered she was pregnant with her third baby. When she told Stuart, it seemed as though he couldn’t be more ecstatic to continue forward with their little clan. Hell, he’d even gone so far as to hope that they would have a little girl. The next several months went by and Stuart had once again gotten a job. He’d even kept his job through Karen Rose McCormick’s birth.

What seemed like a very short time after Karen was born, though, Stuart had lost his job for mouthing off to a customer or the manager or someone else of equal importance. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter who they were because he didn’t deserve to be treated as badly as he had been through his duration at this job. He tried to work hard for his family, but goddammit, if he wasn’t the most mistreated person.

Life for the McCormick family continued this way for several years which was exactly why food was such a rare commodity and the family often went hungry.

All three kids had grown to be severely malnourished, not that it was easily spotted by all of their baggy hand-me-downs clothes. It was very often that three sets of Poptarts were split between each member of the family: one for everybody except Stuart, who received two as the man of the house. Anything besides frozen waffles for dinner was a delicacy and mayo sandwiches were often something enjoyed for lunch. If it had been a good month and the people at the electric company had the grace to keep the power on for the family, the kids would get ramen.

Kevin had a fond memory of Kenny where he had come home from his friend Stan’s house. His belly looked distended but his little blue eyes hadn’t ever seemed happier. Kenny had just started kindergarten so he guessed Kenny had the best meal he’d ever eaten in his short life. He had a similar memory that involved Karen after she had come home from her friend Tricia’s house. He was glad his brother and sister had such good friends that were willing to feed them.

The eldest McCormick child wasn’t so lucky. He’d never really made friends. The other kids in school had already considered him stupid, hard to talk to, and less than friend material. He wasn’t interesting or he smelled badly. They called him names, made fun of him for wearing the same pair of pants every day, and tormented him about his shoes always being worn out and falling apart. Kevin McCormick was poison on anyone that tried to be friends with him and the sad thing was that Kevin knew it.

Maybe it was from the meth and alcohol riddled breast milk he was still ingesting at three years old because his parents couldn’t afford real food or potentially it was from when he was left alone in the house for god-knows how many months while his parents were sitting in jail. Perhaps it was from all the years of starvation or getting beaten by drunken and drugged out parents. There was a chance, even, that was just who Kevin was as a person and there was no real cause for his behavior. Whatever the case, Kevin had decided that he was better off without other people.

That didn’t mean he wanted that life for Kenny and Karen, however, so he encouraged them and loved them. He praised them when they deserved praise and scolded them when they deserved scolding. If Carol or Stuart got angry with the other two, Kevin always tried to step in to take the brunt of their fury. Occasionally he wouldn’t get there until after some damage to his younger siblings had been done, but try as he might, Kevin would run to get hit before Kenny or Karen were ever hurt.

Kevin decided that if their parents couldn’t buck up and become real, true adults for the sake of their children then Kevin could grow up and do it for them. With this goal in mind, Kevin didn’t have time for friends.

So at the ripe age of thirteen, Kevin forged Stuart’s signature and sent it in to the school board for South Park, Colorado. He would begin ‘home school’ by the beginning of the spring semester. Christmas break was coming up so that gave Kevin plenty of time to find a job before the holidays.


	2. Kevin McCormick and the Hunt for Employment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin finds an ad in the paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys. Sorry for the late update! I've been working a lot of hours lately and it's hard to find the time to write much. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this little update. 
> 
> Thank you for all the positive reviews while I've been out of pocket. You guys are the absolute best!
> 
> Also, this chapter is pretty much unbeta'd so if you find any mistakes, please tell me. 
> 
> Thanks everyone!

Doubt filled Kevin’s soul as he looked up at the three large garage doors. He took in a deep gulp, eyes shifting between the three bulky, white painted garage doors, the small ‘normal’ entrance to the left of the mechanical doors and the want ad in the local newspaper. The thirteen-year-old had dressed his best to make a good impression on the man who had posted the advertisement. Kevin’s best though was a dingy blue suit that his mom told him not to get dirty when she caught him going out wearing it. It was funny, Kevin thought. She was concerned for the suit but not the fact that it was Wednesday and Kevin hadn’t been to school all week. His chest heaved in anxiousness as he looked at the watch he’d stolen from his English teacher three days before he officially quit going to school. The time was 9:09 in the morning. Surely the garage was open by now. _Here goes nothin’_. The teen began to walk forward, hearing nothing but the embarrassing sound of his dad’s dress shoes clunking against the gravel beneath him. Kevin was relatively small for his age. His mother was convinced he just hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet and Kevin hoped she was right. It was incredibly embarrassing to be just a couple inches taller than his eight-year-old brother.

Reaching the ‘normal’ door, Kevin placed his left hand on the knob and slowly turned. A part of him was hoping that maybe, just maybe, the knob wouldn’t turn and that it was still locked. He’d kind of hoped that the ad was all in his imagination. He almost didn’t want to do this. _No thirteen-year-old should have a job. Why were his parents so stupid?_ A deep inhale and he pushed the door forward and stepped inside. The unmistakable smell of tires and oil filled his nostrils. Kevin couldn’t help but smile. He liked the smell. He considered it masculine and that was something he’d wanted for his job: masculinity. _How cool would it be if he could become a mechanic?_ He began to walk forward, toward a front desk with a little bell on it. His shoes kept clunking against the cement floor and, despite no one being around, he was embarrassed. He felt his face heat up just a bit but he tried to push it back. Another deep breath. _What if they didn’t hire him because of his shoes?_ He shook the thought of his head and reached up, pushing the button on the little bell.

A relatively short moment passed by before he heard a door open and shut. The sound of heavy boots against the cement floor caused all the anxiousness welling up in Kevin’s chest to almost overflow. He was never very good with people and because of that, he had a lot of social anxiety. This wasn’t going to be any different. There was no way he was going to get this job. Kevin began to turn around, almost ran out of the door, back home to apologize to his mom and tell her that he’d dropped out of school and maybe his decision was a mistake. The sound of a man’s voice stopped him from bolting out of the garage.

“Can I help ya?” The man’s voice was gruff and had an almost angry tone to it. Kevin closed his eyes before turning on his heel to look at the older man. This guy had to have been in his late fifties, just judging by the wrinkles around his eyes and the gray that had started to litter his chest length beard. He looked like someone from ZZ TOP, Kevin decided. That made him smile enough to show a single row of crooked teeth. The man wore dirty blue jeans that were covered in grease stains and a gray button up shirt with the name “Teddy” stitched in a white name tag sewn right over the left chest pocket.

“Uh, uh,” Kevin began, gulping. Fuck. He already sounded stupid. He held out the newspaper and, with steel blue eyes, looked up at the man. “I’m, uh, here for the want ad.” He revealed. “It said you needed someone to sweep the shop, take care of oil spills, and to make runs for parts. I, uh…” _Shit, he did it again._ “I-I can do all that, sir.”

Teddy watched Kevin. The frown that he’d entered the room with remained on his face as he reached over to snatch the newspaper from Kevin’s hands. He opened the paper to the page the want ad was on and nodded his head before looking behind him down a hallway towards what Kevin could only assume was the actual garage. “Gerry!” The man’s voice was almost intimidating when he yelled. When there was no response, he walked down the hallway and yelled again. “Gerardo!”

It wasn’t too long after that a very tall man walked out of the garage with Teddy. The man held a red rag in his hands as he cleaned his fingers. It looked like he’d accidently dipped them in oil. The man looked around for a moment before spotting Kevin, dressed in his Sunday best. He grinned and looked back to Teddy.

“Think he’ll do?” Teddy asked.

Gerry nodded his head fervently. “Yeah, boss, he should do okay.” _Why was this man smiling?_ The man had a funny accent. Kevin didn’t think he was from Colorado.

Kevin watched the exchange between the two men. He cocked a dark blonde eyebrow and tilted his head just a bit as he continued to watch boss-man Teddy and Gerry.

“Go get the papers.” Teddy instructed Gerardo and with a nod, the tall man headed down the hall. Kevin heard the door shut, leaving Kevin alone with the shop boss.

The sound of the older, bearded man clearing his throat rang in Kevin’s ears. He looked up at the shop boss. This man’s eyes were a deep, chocolate brown. He looked tired. “Listen, kid,” Teddy began, “We need ya to do all that stuff we put in the paper.” He paused, watching Kevin. “Ya listenin’ to me, boy?”

It felt like a ball went into Kevin’s throat and he couldn’t swallow it down. He hated when people wanted him to speak. “Uh, yes, sir.” He said with a nod of the head. A few of his combed locks fell into his eyes. He hurried to push the hair back in its place while he listened to Teddy.

“Good. This is important.” The man placed a heavy hand on Kevin’s left shoulder and looked him dead in the eyes.

The youth’s heart pounded heavily in his chest. He’d dealt with intimidating people before but there was something about Teddy that was flat out scary. Kevin wasn’t sure if it was the beard, the crow’s feet around those chocolate brown eyes, or just the generally angry expression that seemed pretty constant on the older man’s face but he made Kevin nervous. Something deep in the teen’s gut told him that if he pissed this guy off, something unfortunate would happen.

“Now, what’d ya say yer name was, boy?”

“Kevin McCormick, uh, sir.”

“McCormick,” Teddy took in the name. It seemed as though the older man was trying to take it in, memorize it. The pause was odd, almost too long, before Teddy spoke again. “Alright, listen up now.” His voice was suddenly hushed but very firm, none-the-less. “I gotta know we can trust ya ‘fore we start givin’ ya the big jobs. Gotta work yer way up.” Looking away from the boy, Teddy walked behind the counter he’d sat at when Kevin first walked in and grabbed a push broom. It had a long nose with thick bristles. “This’s the shop broom. Anything that’s not covered in oil can be pushed up into the trash. If there’s a motor oil spill in the garage, you’ll cover it up with cat litter. Can’t have none of that just loose and puddlin’ up. S’illegal. You’ll also do some tedious shit around the shop. Just whatever we need ya to do fer us. Orderin’ parts, runnin’ to get ‘em. The like.”

Kevin could only nod as he listened to Teddy speak. When addressed, his head moved a little faster as if that would give Teddy the impression that he was listening really well. “Uh, y-yes, sir.”

“Good, Mick.” The nickname made Kevin tilt his head but he didn’t dare correct the older man. The teen made a mental note to tell the shop boss that his name was Kevin later. “Now, I do have a special job for ya if ya think ye’re able, boy.” Teddy cleared his throat and reached into a pocket in his dirty jeans. The faint sound of jingling was made as a heavy set of keys was pulled out and behind the counter, Kevin heard fumbling through papers. A receipt book was thrown on the counter. “You’ll also be talkin’ to people. Takin’ down what they need us to do. Say a man comes in, needs oil changed. You take that down, tell somebody about it so we can do it, and then tell the man the price. I’ll give ya a notebook that tells ya what we charge for e’rything we do here.”

Breath hitching, Kevin nodded still. His blue eyes had widened at all the tasks Teddy was listing off. It was overwhelming and Kevin wasn’t sure if he could do the thing where he spoke to people. People didn’t particularly enjoy talking to him and, honestly, he didn’t like talking to people. But still, he needed the job. He needed to buck up. Karen and Kenny needed to eat after all. He was doing this for them. “Uh, s-sir?” He asked.

“Yeah?” Teddy inquired, almost surprised that Kevin spoke.

“Um, can I watch somebody do the order takin’ thing?” The youth asked. He took in a deep breath before continuing. “I ain’t done nothin’ like that before. Just wanna be sure I do it okay.”

A door slammed and Gerry came back holding a stack of papers. “A’ight, kid, got some stuff for ya to sign.”

+-++-++-++-++-++

Seemingly the day had gone on forever by the time Kevin walked in the front door of his family’s dilapidated home. Gerry had noticed this and offered Kevin a ride home from the garage when they finished up just a little after 6PM. Cleaning up the shop and taking everyone’s orders had proven to be a lot harder than Kevin had initially imagined. His feet felt like they were carrying heavier and heavier cement shoes with every step the teen took from the front door to his and Karen’s bedroom. Kevin found it difficult even to carry the temporary gray button up shirt Teddy’d given him until they could get him one with a sewn name patch.

With some miracle force guiding him, though, Kevin pushed open the bedroom door and saw Karen playing by herself. She was sitting on the floor next to her mattress, holding onto a little doll and combing through its hair with a comb. The comb was almost too big for the somewhat life-like toy but it was endearing how careful Karen was trying to be with the fake hair. Kevin couldn’t count how many times he had been told that Karen’s dolly was tender headed like her so it was super important that she was careful when getting out the tangles. He moved to close the door behind him as he moved a bit further into the room. When the door clicked shut, Karen looked up at Kevin and grinned broadly. “Kevin!” She exclaimed. “You’re home really late today.”

A smile creeped over Kevin’s lips and he nodded his head. “Yeah.” Was all he managed to force out. He began to drag his feet as he made his way to the mattress he called his own. It was sheetless and stained but belonged to no one but the oldest McCormick child. He tossed the work shirt at the foot of his mattress and plopped down, face first, into his large cushion. He could make out Karen moving to get up from her spot, gingerly situating her doll on its own makeshift bed and then padding her way over to her brother.

“Why ya so late, Kev?” She asked, moving a small hand to pat gently at his back.

Kevin let out a heavy sigh and slowly moved so that he was laying on his back. “Can you keep a secret?” He questioned his little sister.

Little lake-like orbs watched Kevin for a moment before Karen’s cheeks forced them upwards thanks to her smile. All she did was nod her head and sit down in the floor between her and Kevin’s mattresses as she waited for her oldest brother’s covert story.  
“I, uh…” Kevin’s tongue poked out to lick his chapped lips. “I got me a job.”

Those little lake-like eyes widened and Karen’s mouth gaped open to show her surprise. “Oh my god, Kevin!” She seemed excited. “Can I tell Kenny?”

Laughing, Kevin expressed: “Yeah, you can tell Ken. No one else though!” His voice had a joking tone to it but Kevin knew that Karen was aware of when to take him seriously. “Mom and Dad can’t know so I want you to pinky promise me you won’t tell anyone but Kenny.”

“Sure, Kev!” Karen promised and reached her petite hand to her brother’s larger one and wrapped her pinky finger around his. “I promise to tell nobody but Kenny.”


End file.
